The american consumer just finished a marathon in a sprint. Since my Grandfather and his fellow GI’s returned home from the Greatest War, material consumption in the U.S. has gained speed though 60 years and 4 generations of Americans. It was a good run. And it is with relief and a touch of nostalgic sadness to end the 50 year feast on the fruits of free market capitalism. Lets take a stroll down memory lane.
1950-1960: A Well-Oiled Baby Makin’ Machine
1960-1970: The factory at full speed
1970-1980: The Cracks begin to show
1980-1990: Members Only: the rise of FIRE
Not without a flair for the dramatic, we Americans capped off the binge with a grand finale. Since 2001 when George Bush called on the american people to serve their country by ’shopping more’ we have tapped every perceivable credit line and card that the dumb banks would loan us. What did we buy?
Shit for our pets
In 200? we have bought enough pet paraphernalia to sink a cargo freight coming from China.
LCD/Plasma screens
One in every living room, bedroom, kids room, SUV headrest, Nintento DS, Macbook Pro, and expresso machine. I know I’ve miss some. Put them in the comments.
Expensive weddings foisted on us by bridal magazines
What a better way to kick of the toughest 2 years of an already trying social contract than with $30,000 of debt. So a bunch of monkeys you ‘kind of know’ can get drunk on your tab. I believe wedding can be special without breaking the bank.
Kitchens
Viking gas ranges that get about as much use as the palates machine in the garage. Come on you know you just going to drive through Wendy’s.
I do not exempt myself from this group. I am very much the gadget fan and
Every four years, during U.S. presidential elections, the same thing happens, except it’s always a little bit different.
Some clever political operative injects “oppo” into the campaign – some little “scandal” that supposedly speaks to the “character” of a candidate – and the press corps obsesses on this marginal issue nearly to the exclusion of all substantive matters.
This all-consuming event distorts the campaign, turning the targeted candidate into a laughingstock or someone who isn’t quite American enough. Pundits pile on with criticism that the guy should have reacted faster or slower or answered this way or that.
Millions of voters become convinced, amid this intense negativity, that they simply can’t vote for this loser and the outcome of the election changes.
Then, in the election aftermath, the American press corps goes through a period of self-reflection; some excellence-in-journalism group issues a scathing report about the superficiality of the news coverage; political journalists vow that in the next election they won’t get suckered again.
Then, the process – which dates back at least to 1988 and Lee Atwater’s savaging of Michael Dukakis – begins anew, albeit always with some slightly new twist.
All this might be quite funny if one doesn’t consider the consequences for the Republic. When historians try to figure out how the most powerful nation on earth managed to end up under the control of someone as unfit as George W. Bush for eight years, they will have to take note of this media phenomenon.
In 2000, Al Gore was transformed from a thoughtful, even far-sighted government official into a delusional braggart who claimed “I invented the Internet” (though he really didn’t say that), a traitor who sold nuclear secrets to China (though he didn’t), and a phony who wore earth-tone sweaters and cowboy boots.
John Kerry also had many strong points – as a genuine Vietnam War hero (a decorated Swiftboat captain in the Mekong Delta) and a gutsy investigator (Nicaraguan contra drug trafficking and BCCI) – but saw his war heroism smeared by the misnamed Swiftboat Veterans for Truth and his Americanism mocked because he “looked French.”
At key moments in these campaigns, the press let the “oppo” define Bush’s opponents and thus millions of Americans went to the polls believing fiction was truth, up was down. (For details, see Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.)
Going to Be Different
In 2008, however, the conventional wisdom was that the pattern would be different.
America could no longer afford the silliness – with the United States bogged down in two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), with the dollar sinking and the federal debt rising, with global warming requiring urgent attention and gas prices soaring, with America’s image in the world shattered by Bush’s policies of preemptive wars and torture.
This time, the campaign press corps would keep its focus on what really mattered. Or at least, it would not wander too far off course.
But it didn’t turn out that way. With Hillary Clinton’s campaign playing the “oppo” role filled before by Republican operatives like the late Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, the attacks on Barack Obama’s “character” gradually took hold.
Especially, during the six-week lull before the key Pennsylvania primary, the American people got a steady dose of this “oppo,” especially the guilt by association that sought to define Obama by the comments of his former pastor Jeremiah Wright and by his tenuous connection to Vietnam War-era radical William Ayers.
There also was the furor over the fact that Obama often didn’t wear an American flag lapel pin (though Hillary Clinton and John McCain didn’t either).
One might have thought the obsession with Wright and with the lesser themes of Ayers and the flag pin would have soon disappeared as just little blips on the campaign’s radar, but that would have required the exercise of some judgment and self-control by prominent national journalists.
Instead, the old pattern reasserted itself. So, on April 16 in the first prime-time debate on a major network, ABC News moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson hammered away at these “oppo” themes for nearly the first half of the debate: Wright, Ayers, flag pins.
By the time many Americans had given up or flipped the channel to Fox’s “American Idol,” they hadn’t heard a single question about issues that affect them directly. Though Obama appeared damaged by the pounding, ABC also got roughed up by critics of the debate, which was denounced as the most disgraceful debate ever.
A few excepts from the 19,000+ comments on abcnews.com
“Absolutely disgusting. I realize that journalism is dead but Gibson and Stephanopoulos dragged the body out and kicked it some more. You have done a tragic disservice to our nation.”
“It’s refreshing to see that my impression of the debate was shared by so many others. A full 45 minutes of trivial stuff that was simply gotcha “journalism” - asking inane and stupid questions while our economy is going down the tubes, gas is over $3.00 a gallon, we have lost over 4,000 brave servicemen and women in Iraq, and we have a health care crisis. And yet the priority items were ways to try to catch the candidates looking foolish. We are trying to elect a president, not play “gotcha”! This debate was a pitiful waste of time when it could have been an exercise in educating the American electorate about each candidate’s positions on important issues of the day. Barack Obama tried to make the point that this kind of “debate” is what makes people so cynical about politics. As someone else said, ABC and Fox “News” deserve each other. I guess I’ll stick to the likes of PBS and other reputable news organizations. Shame on you, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous! You behaved like entertainers, not journalists! I would have expected better of you.”
“This undoubtably was the worst excuse for a debate that I’ve ever seen. I’m not interested in Charles or Georges personal opinions which permeated the entire 90 minutes. What I’m interested in is the policy positions of the candidates. This was totally ignored in the first hour. Shame on Charles, George, and ABC.”
Update 4-21-08: Many sites are know calling for a boycott of the ABC network and its advertisers. It is intended to send a clear message to all the networks that they lease the public airwaves from the citizens of this nation. It is not acceptable to turn our democratic process into a sensational reality tv debate.
Hotpads.com’s foreclosure heat map is a beautifully programed, web 2.o application…that will make you crap you pants. We all enjoyed watching our “zestimate” double during the mania of ‘06. But its a lot less fun to see houses in your ‘hood selling 35% less than what it was worth 2 years ago.
Its like a game of monopoly, gone horrible wrong. Looking good, M-town.
I would not count on a bottom anytime soon. This was a speculative boom, not driven by demand like the post-WWII population boom seen in the graph below. We are going to have a long grind down the other side of this anomaly. If there’s a silver lining, perhaps “Flip This House” will be cancelled.
